19TH AFRICA ROAD CHAMPIONSHIP: DANGEROUS RIDERS TO WATCH

19TH AFRICA ROAD CHAMPIONSHIP: DANGEROUS RIDERS TO WATCH

All the anxiety, the thrills, the attacks and the demonstration of quality bike control will be exhibited on the streets of Ablekuma Ollebu in some few days.

19 countries have confirmed participation so far: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cote D’Ivoire, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Morrocco, Nigeria, Rwanda ,Sao Tome and Uganda.

Certain countries and riders cannot be overlooked in this exercise. A great deal of threshold power and pedal experience is about to hit the Ablekuma Ollebu stretch.

Incredible power,pace and precision is about to separate the “boys” from the “men” in what appears to be the exposure of a qualitative training regiment and a desirous taste to win medals.

After carefully navigating through the lenses of the UCI Africa Tour rankings, it has postioned Eritrean sprinter and Time Trialist and infact the best rider on the African continent currently,Girmay Biniam as the master of the pedals.

Biniam is just 22 years of age and rides for UCI World Team, Intermediate Wanty Gobert Materieux . Standing at 1.84 in height, the shy looking Eritrean has emerged as the first Black cyclist to win a grand Tour stage after winning stage 10 of the Giro.

His contract with his current Team stands until 2026 and a mouthwatering per season salary of over €1m.

Biniam won the best African cyclist for the third consecutive year since the inception of the Awards in 2012.

The African log sheet has witty South African Gibbons Ryan, 28 years of age and rides for UAE Team Emirates.

He was named in the start list for the 2017 Giro d’italia and won the first stage of the first ever virtual Tour de France in July 2020 and the following month, he was named in the Tour de France.

Gibbons signed a two year deal with UAE Team Emirates from 2021.

Honestly, 8 South Africans are ranked in the first 20 lists with 6 Eritreans in there.

But going through the checklist once more I noticed out of the 37 entire riders on the Africa Tour Ranking, 19 riders are coming from South Africa. Incredible.

Eritrea has 12 out of the 37 riders with Algeria squeezing through with 5 out of 37 riders.

One more interest shifted to West Africa. And here Burkina Faso’s Damont Paul and Nikiema Bachirou rolled in on 19th and 32nd Positions respectively.

From the little statistics I have combed through it is obvious the most dangerous Country to watch at this year’s Africa Road Championships is Eritrea, followed by South Africa, and Algeria would follow suit.

It is going to be a heated tarmac on the Ablekuma Ollebu stretch from the 8-17th February,2023 and with just some few days to go, the average Ghanaian would come to terms with the sport of Cycling and would believe in naked eyeballs that at times the bike runs faster than a car.

Dennis Kweku Moore
Cycling Reporter/Public Relations-Ghana Cycling Federation

Email: moorecycling67@gmail.com